TECH NEWS – According to Asus’ comparison, AMD’s Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU will be able to deliver much more performance than its standard Z1 counterpart…

Asus is launching two variants of its handheld PC. The cheaper version of the Asus ROG Ally will cost $600, but it will feature AMD’s weaker Z1 APU (processor and graphics chip integrated on a single circuit). Add another $100 and you’ve got AMD’s Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU. Asus justifies this price difference by saying that the more expensive model is not aimed at the average consumer, but until now it was questionable whether such a price difference between the two variants was justified…

So what is the difference between the two APUs? In the plain Z1, there are 6 cores and 12 threads for the CPU, while the GPU has 4 RDNA 3 cores. The Extreme variant has 8 cores and 16 threads for the CPU, while the GPU has 12 RDNA 3 cores and higher clock speeds. The power consumption (TDP) of both APUs ranges between 9 and 30W. Asus tested both at 30W in several games (Elden Ring, FIFA 23, Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Forza Horizon 5, Diablo IV) at 720p and 1080p resolutions. The images below speak for themselves (blue: Z1 Extreme, purple: Z1): the Extreme version has 30-40% more performance and shows what it can do especially at 1080p (the 34% advantage at 720p increases to 42%).

At 720p, the AMD Ryzen Z1 is close to the Z1 Extreme, but there’s an explanation: the images also show RSR, which stands for Radeon Super Resolution Upscaling. So that’s something to consider, but for the 16% higher price, you’ll get much higher frame rates if you go for the Extreme APU version of the handheld PC!

Source: WCCFTech